Geeky Kit still closed one month after police raid

You may remember, one month ago, Trading Standards raided Geeky Kit, a popular Android TV box re seller in the UK. For those of us on this side of The Pond, Trading Standards is the licensing and copyright infringement arm of the British law enforcement.

As originally reported by TorrentFreak.com, the physical locations of Geeky Kit were shut down on June 8th and haven’t opened their doors since. The raids also resulted in the arrest of one man under the Copyright Designs and Patent Act.

I thought is would be a good time to revisit Geeky Kit and see what their current status is, and offer a little commentary on how this affects the Android TV box and media streaming community as a whole.

Geeky Kit still silent

My first stop was to Geeky Kit’s Facebook page. While the page is still up, which is a good sign for the company, there’s been no activity since June 9th. That’s not so good. (Update September 2015: The page has now been closed)

The last post, shown here, states that they remain closed while under investigation. It seems as though most of their followers have given up as well. The last customer comment on the page was from June 27th, although there have been some other businesses which offer to “fix” the boxes – essentially turning them into stock Android TV boxes running Kodi.

What I found interesting was that the post specifically mentioned Sky TV, one of the major pay-TV broadcasters in the UK, Cable TV for those of us in Canada and the US. Looking back on some of Geeky Kit’s ads and even their storefront signage (see the image at the top of this article), I can definitely understand why. I can only imagine the fury that Comcast or Time Warner would bring to companies who were so blatant about streaming their content.

My next stop was the company’s website itself. Unfortunately, the site had even less details. And by “less”, I mean “none.”

Geekykit.com has been stripped down to a blank website, with only a few ads. All of the text has been replaced by “Lorem Ipsum“, which is used as dummy text for websites under construction. I tried to reach out to the company for comment on this article, but could not reach them by email. The “Contact Us” section still displays correctly, but the contact form doesn’t work.

All in all, this doesn’t bode well for Geeky Kit’s future as a company. DroidSticks, one of the biggest suppliers in the UK, has restructured their business in order to avoid the troubles at Geeky Kit, concentrating on being a re-seller of stock Android TV boxes.

Our thoughts

Honestly, I have nothing but good things to say about DroidSticks (now called Entertainment Box)‘ decision to distance themselves from the shady side of the industry. Android TV boxes provide something that customer’s want: access to their streaming media services without being “locked-in” to the exclusive content on the big companies like Apple or Roku. They’re doing business the right way and I applaud their decision.

As far as Geeky Kit goes, I don’t see them returning to business any time soon. What they offered was an easy way to circumvent the system. I see the same thing in so many Android streaming devices lately, and I just wonder how long this can go on.

I think back to what happened with Napster. For those of you too young to remember, Napster was the first popular music streaming service. Only, it wasn’t quite legal. What Napster offered was a way for users to share their music and movies in the hopes of being able to download other user’s files without having to pay for them. The concept is similar to what Pirate Bay is doing today, although the key difference is that Pirate Bay doesn’t host the files themselves. Still, Pirate Bay has their own share of legal issues.

Napster eventually got in serious legal trouble and had to re-brand themselves as a legal music streaming site. The trouble was that the vast majority of their customers were used to getting their content for free and now didn’t want to suddenly have to pay for it.

Eventually Napster was bought out by Rhapsody, which hopes to capitalize on the Napster name.

Getting back to Geeky Kit, unless they get bought out by a larger company hoping to win over some of their customers, I think we’ve seen the last of Geeky Kit.

Have you had any experience with Geeky Kit? Do you have one of their boxes? I’d love to hear your story in the comments below.